Posts Tagged ‘development’

Images of Africa in the western media are often characterised by famine and conflict. The discussion of poverty in African countries often overlooks the facts of everyday life. A new book The Ringtone and the Drumsets out to change this. Its author, an expert on development policy, presents the fast-changing politics and culture in three of the world’s poorest and least visited countries – Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Burkina Faso.

Why did you decide to travel around three of the world’s poorest countries?

I’ve worked in international development for quite a long time now, trying to work out what’s gone wrong in the world’s poorest countries. What can be done to help improve the lives of people living there? But although I’d spent time in Africa before, and in Asia on short trips, I felt as that I hadn’t really got under the skin of what it’s like to live in poverty. I wanted to find out what the people who lived in the world’s poorest countries talk about. What do they do every day? How are they adjusting to the onrush of modernity and globalisation that’s transforming so much of the developing world?

France is set to have 13 ecocities attracting 50,000 extra inhabitants over the next 25 years in specially designed eco-quarters. The government has told local authorities to submit their plans by March next year. Eighty per cent of France’s population lives in urban areas which produce 70 per cent of French greenhouse gas emissions. The plan aims to “show that it’s possible to grow, to welcome new inhabitants and do it in a sustainable way,” government adviser Emmanuelle Gay told RFI.